The LotusGardener's Manifesto
by Anupassi
Summary: Inspired by Winston's diary from 1984, this is not precisely a story, but rather the meditations of an anonymous dissident who has awoken to "the sleeping demons of Yang's communal utopia." Rated for non-explicit references to totalitarian methods.


Today, the 8th of January, 2113, under a veiled winter sky, I committed an act of mental sedition against the authority of the New Collective of Mankind, and against the Eternal Chairman of the Eusocialist Party, Shen-ji Yang. I do not know what will be done to me if this testament is discovered by the Abutters, but I can make an educated guess based on previous observations. They will, in all likelihood, attempt to nerve staple me, deprive me of sleep, and recondition my mental processes through deprivation-induced suffering and drug-induced bliss to render me a genejack. The Hive wastes nothing.

It is all such a wretched travesty. According to the Apes, we are the most powerful faction still on Planet, with the most potent arsenal, the largest and most well fed population, and the highest degree of scientific research. The people I see on the streets, though, are all so weak and helpless, like malnourished laboratory rats, running about the sprawling maze. Yet there is no cheese for them at the end of the puzzle, only a conversion tank, to fertilize the greenhouse soil. Sometimes I wonder if I am the last human alive, surrounded only by phantoms and the mere memories of men. I am the only person who can truly be in danger, because I _pose_ a danger. The rest are Citizens. I am a Human, and thus I can infect others with the virulence of Humanity. How strange that though this totalitarian state claims to be the 'bulwark of the race' and to defend it from the amorphous threat of 'atavism,' it has reduced its Humans into little better than frightened herd animals, perpetually stalked by the Abutter wolves, trained and directed by the Ape herders, and cut to pieces by the order of Asp butchers. If I am a viral agent, then, it is my duty to follow my basic nature, and to infect as many others as possible before nature takes its course. I write this to reach the ears, eyes, and minds of the Citizenry and to elevate them to Humanity with the Dharma, which cannot be denied by any being, be it drone or Chairman.

If the Chairman is life, then I choose death. If the Chairman is death, then I choose life. For he is the master of this Naraka that I daily witness. No Frozen-tongue Hell is equal to this Frozen-mind Hell, where all awareness and compassion are treason, and submission and loathing are virtues. It is a world of mechanism, where inspiration has been supplanted by desperation, and hope, by dread. It is the end of Mankind, a long and sullen extinction, as in the _Dhammapada_, "The heedful do not die, but the heedless are as if dead already." It has become a philosophical principle tantamount to axiom that the only form of mental activity that can be permitted is that that further glorifies the Eusocialist Party and the Collective. Yet the glory of Party and Collective is falsehood, and one need only look as far as the conditions in which the Citizenry lives. Why, if our population is so well nourished, are women mandated to abort one of their children if they are pregnant with twins? Do they place that great a strain on our resources? Or, perhaps, does the Party seek to control the emotions of the Citizen mother by permanently excising a portion of her life, and freeze over her nerves of joy? Why, if we are the only nation to truly recognize the dignity of human life by protecting it from atavism, do we degrade that dignity with the practice of public admission of guilt? Does that truly ward off the base tendencies of suspicion and resentment with a dispassionate display of natural justice? Or, perhaps, does it serve to reinforce the fear and trembling of the Citizenry, and thus to effect, in even greater measure, their slavish obedience?

Yet we tolerate these hypocrisies, day and night, because they are trivial and commonplace. Who had ever heard of such a thing as a woman bringing twins to term? No, such selfish defiance clearly indicates an instinctive concern for the transmission of genes, and thus a lack of desire for the expansion of the mind into collectivist harmony and peace. Who had ever entertained the notion of allowing atavists and aberrations to recant their beliefs in private? No, the only way to truly ensure a Citizen's regained loyalty is to see him debase himself before the rest of the Citizenry, and thus to show that he is free of his own ego.

We are informed that the other factions on Planet, be they Gaians, the University, or Peacekeepers, have made a fundamental error in their analysis of the human being by labeling his individualism and personal aspiration as positive, when, in fact, they are throwbacks of the worst order. The error of the foreigners, then, is that they have evaluated human nature to be fundamentally good, while the Eusocialist Party has evaluated it to be fundamentally bad—or, as they might prefer it to be rendered, _in need of improvement_. I, for one, firstly doubt that the Gaians, who believe that the human race must rethink its attitude towards the environment or risk its own annihilation, categorically assert that humans are solely good. However, it goes further than that. I have to wonder at the wisdom of analyzing humanity as solely good or solely evil in either case. If we believe ourselves to be solely good, then we will ignore our own heinous wrongdoing and rest on our laurels in comfortable security, so debasing our Humanity. If we believe ourselves to be solely bad (or _in need of improvement_), then there is no hope for us in our present state, and we must resolve on perfecting ourselves by casting away our Humanity. Humans are not good, but then, they are not bad. They are simply a part of nature. We are certainly more fortunate than some orders of biological existence, but that makes us neither infinitely superior to them, nor likely to slide back to their state at a moment's notice through apathy and self-indulgence.

"The crowd is untruth" might be revised to "The Party is untruth." The very foundation of this collectivist system relies on deceptions, on the ignorance of its subjects maintained by the deprivation of facts and on their stupidity in refusing to consider alternative sources of information. When information becomes an instrument of influence rather than an assumed right, the man who wields that information has taken the first step towards your enslavement. The only effective way to enslave a man is to convince him that he must be enslaved, whether it is for his own good or for the good of those people whom he loves most dearly. I ask you to imagine, for a moment, a world where every inquiry can gain some sort of answer, in encyclopedia or in conversation with his neighbors. Does it not sound alien to we, who are so used to the teacher's peremptory snap, "They do not talk about such things" when we inquire innocently as to where on Planet the Eternal Chairman was born or why the Party position on music was changed five years ago to allow music in the form of work songs? Yet such a life was present among our ancestors, is present still in the University of Planet and the Peacekeepers. The truth that underlies the Party is ever-present, yet we are conditioned by years of intimidation and coercion that we are not to seek the fullness of the truth. Only the Pillars of Eusocialist Thought need serve as higher laws. "Laws of peace, of love, of unity: Of pity, compassion, forgiveness. Let each chuse one habitation: His ancient infinite mansion: One command, one joy, one desire, One curse, one weight, one measure, One King, one God, one Law." And so peace rots upon its vine and love is turned bitter through our unity.

But I declare now that the Truth is one, outside the views that beings expound, for the Chairman is just a mortal creature as we are. After the drama of our race has reached its conclusion (ever do I blaspheme against Eusocialist Thought), the cosmos will endure after its nature, and abide by its natural laws. Everything arises and everything passes away beyond the strength of kings. If a meteor were to crash into our territories tomorrow, what would become of the Party in the freezing shadow of the dust? These human institutions that ape godhood are as frail as the men upon whom they rest. The Party often says, "One voice is drowned by the many," yet I say to you, "The voice of the many is drowned by the Truth." Therefore, go with Truth, and no man can silence you. You shall be a Human, for with the reason that is our lucky gift, we may make the Truth manifest in our every deed. For this is Dharma, that which underwrites all that was and is and shall ever be. Reject the Public Enlightenment and seek after your own, I say. It is true that, as the Party hammers into our minds from the cradle, we can never do this alone, but it is also true that we can never do this without a sense of ourselves. Seek after the Truth for your own sake and for the sake of others, so that we may abide not by the perverse will of lying men but by natural law.

Do not fail, in every thought, to express the compassion that is your duty to feel towards the Citizenry. Feel also compassion towards the Party, and towards the foreigners, and to yourself. To defeat the Party does not mean to crush the men that compose it, but to repudiate the nature of its ideology, and a cornerstone of that ideology is the unthinking antipathy that is cultivated for "outsiders," "atavists," and "dissenters." Let us first learn to love ourselves, though the Party calls us but a cog in the mechanism of society, and then, let us love the outsider and the atavists, though the Party tells us they are less than beasts and worse than demons. Let us love the Party also, though the Party tells us that it is worthy of awe and submission in addition to that love. Let us love the Chairman, and hope that he realizes that the Dharma is not his to command. You shall love every one of these, though not more than yourself (lest you become like the Party), and not less than yourself (lest you become a beast). For when you love the Dharma "with all your strength, with all your heart, and with all your mind", then each being is also worthy of your love, for you aspire that one day, they too will witness what you have witnessed. So long as you seek the ruin and destruction of the Party, of the Eternal Chairman's wretched humiliation at the feet of his enemies before his execution, you allow the Party to survive, even if only within the recesses of your mind. If you would destroy the Party, you must turn against its tools first before you eradicate the ideals. Otherwise, it shall be as the grass blade that springs up from its roots anew every time that the stem is destroyed and cut away, and the entire miserable drama will repeat.

I cannot count how many times I have betrayed the Party. It simply amazes me that I have survived this long without being discovered. The body of my rebellion has not been the freedom with which my thoughts have roamed, but the books that I have secured and read. At any cost, if you would be a rebel against the Party, then read, and reflect upon what you have read. Wade through the records of Humanity that you can find, and inundate yourself with them until you can distinguish the markings of Truth. Hunt Truth on every page, even if only by its traces and the faint suggestion of its presence. For when you catch your quarry, none can contest that victory.

Let there be peace and sobriety in this quest, for the defiance of the passions and of the lusts is almost as painful as the oppression that begets such defiance. "But how can a man be peaceful when such lies and hate are being foisted upon him?" Now hear from me this: _none controls your mind but you_. This is the greatest lie of the Party, the keystone of all their madness and tyranny, that they believe that they can directly alter the courses of the minds of Humanity. It is not so. The Party simply creates a situation so unbearable that the Humans subject to it make the choice to descend into Citizenry. Yet the choice was _theirs to make_. The Party did not choose for them, for that is impossibility. "We alone must walk the path," whether that be a path upwards into the luminous reason of Humanity, or downwards into total submission. Ever nurture a discipline of justice, love, and temperance, whether standing, walking, sitting or lying down. The hell that we have found ourselves in had its origin in the darkest irrationality of the human mind, and our deliverance must lie then with our best and most admirable impulses. Then you will "see how simple it is to lead a life which flows in quiet", and even should they nerve staple you, deny you sleep, inflict torments upon you and drown your senses with filthy narcotic delight, you abide by Dharma, which leads no being astray. On that day when you arrive at the Truth, you arrive also at "the cessation without remnant" of the Party within your mind, and your triumph is absolute.

Note: as of the time of writing, 2147, the identity of the 'Lotus-Gardener' is still unknown. The highly educated style and diverse literary references present in the Manifesto suggest an easy access to the Datalinks, which among the Citizenry of the New Collective of Mankind (or, as it is better known, the Human Hive) were only open to members of the Eusocialist Party's inner circles, scientific researchers, and members of the Agencies that were branded trustworthy by Eusocialist higher officials. Considering the polemical and persuasive nature of the Manifesto, it is most likely that the Lotus-Gardener was a member of the Agency for Public Enlightenment who turned his skills against the Hive. Although propaganda was disseminated during the Gentle Revolution by all rebel factions attributing the Manifesto to their own founders, all of these claims were later proven to be false (usually the work of overeager amateur writers). It is most likely that the Lotus-Gardener either perished or was rendered a genejack at some point between the Manifesto's composition and the outbreak of the Gentle Revolution in 2133. It was probably the greatest loss that our race has suffered since the Arrival: a human with such a heart and such an influence comes but once a thousand years.

**Glossary**

Abutter – member of the Agency for a Better Union Tomorrow, the secret police, judiciary system, and economic ministry of the New Collective

Ape – member of the Agency for Public Enlightenment, the propaganda, education, and ideological ministry of the New Collective

Asp – member of the Agency for Security and Peace, the military ministry of the New Collective

Dharma – a multifaceted Sanskrit word meaning, among other things, "support; truth; condition"

Genejack – a human altered by bioengineering to be incapable of almost any emotive function, needing extremely little sleep, and extremely resistant to physical injury and pain. The creation of genejacks was first developed by Hive researchers in the late 2080s for use in their labor camp factories, and is today considered a crime against humanity by the Second United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

Naraka – a Sanskrit word meaning "hell"


End file.
